Queen of thieves: NHIF Board Chairperson Hannah Muriithi. President Uhuru Kenyatta has replaced her with Lewis Nguyai.
The untouchable Hannah Muriithi who boasted that she has the backing of powerful people in government has been sacked.
Ms Muriithi was the board chair of the National Hospital Insurance Fund (NHIF)
Hannah whose scandals this blogger extensively covered might have directly stolen over Sh1 billion from the national health insurer.
At the start of her tenure, she pocketed a bribe of over Sh40 million from the tender of bringing on board a law firm MMC Africa.
MMC Africa contract was worth over half a billion for services that could easily be undertaken by NHIF internal legal team. READ: NHIF CEO Peter Kamunyo's scandal Hannah later appointed a puppet by the name Nicodemus Odongo as the acting CEO of NHIF. She was the de-facto CEO then doing everything the Nicodemus should have done, even answering journalists. However, when it came to questions of mismanagement, she was quick to say, 'ask the CEO'. The 0.5 billion heist under Hannah Muriithi. Hi
As per your call to issues in NHIF, I am a service provider privy to some information
- it is true that the chair is very very corrupt because of the following story of a legal firm called MMC Africa which she has ties to and she brought to NHIF the minute she was appointed. It is suspected that she was a partner to the law firm but exonerated herself before she pushed for the firm to be given a mega deal. The mega-deal is worth close o 500,000,000 (1/2 a billion)
This is the story: sourced from documents in NHIF.
- The chair Hannah Mureithi was appointed and just after pushed the board to instruct management to bring in a law firm called MMC Africa which was single-sourced. For such an amount of close to 1/2 a billion, it should have been an open tender advertised in the newspaper…it was not. the chair instructed management to add a few law firms to be pre-qualified in the pre-qualified list that already existed without following due process of going to the newspaper. the law firms added backdoor tendered and MMC got the job. The board thus instructed management to instruct MMC Africa to draft contracts between NHIF and Hospitals.
The roles of the hospitals was:
- Review existing template contracts
- prepare a term sheet capturing salient features of the hospital contracts
- draft contacts
- Research on the provision of similar contracts
- standardize contracts
- negotiate terms of the contract
- company searches, print contracts, binding and stamping.
The legal note presented that NHIF has 6700 hospitals thus 6700 contracts.
TIME ENGAGEMENT (how MMC arrived at the 1/2 a billion cost) – MMC presented tho NHIF board that where a charge is so based inline of charges per item of work done per 15 minutes The advocates presented to management that it would take them 10 hours to formulate each contract (never mind its a recurring contract template)
Thus: 7000 shillings quoted x 10 hours x 15 minutes = 280,000 Kes per contract.
280,000 x 6700 which gave 1,87 billion. NHIF was given a rebate of 1.5 billion…
Total fees was 373,103,442 VAT 59,698,000 Disbursement, printing, stamp duty = 43,260,000
Totalling to close to 500,000,000 Kenyan money
The board stated in the meeting that the amount was payable to the strict number of contracts to be signed between NHIF and MMC. The minutes were not fully signed.
The BOM stated that the service level agreement made was to be for 3 years but 2 years was signed. Service agreement did not state any amount as passed by the board.
Since the service level agreement was signed in 24/0/2018 and on 9.07.18, MMC Africa was paid 147,000,000, then 151,556,000 on 16.8.18 then 37,771,000 on 15.10.2018 then 111,000 them 293,000 totaling to 336,632,462 as at march this year. Kenyan money that was lost because the serviced were not necessary. This work used to be done by the NHIF legal team but the chair pushed that it be done with a firm which did half the job. the contracts were returned to the legal team for implementation.. to save face, the legal team did the work as MMC was paid millions that should have been paid to hospitals.
Areas of concern
- was contracting necessary to pay close to half a billion yet staff could do the work?
- payment was done yet the finance and investment committee of the board of management minutes were not duly signed by the chair and CEO
- The number of contracts – 6700 stated in the board minutes and passed by the board yet 7009 contracts were paid.
- In march 2019, 34% of the contracts had been worked on and 78% of the total bill paid
- The contract is to run for 2 years as per the service level agreement yet the board had stated it covers 3 years..why was it shortened than 78% of the money disbursed 6 months later yet the contract was for 2 years?
- payments done yet the full board minutes not signed by chair who is elusive to sign since she is the deal owner.
This is based on facts lifted from NHIF.
Here are some explosive articles about the reign of terror and looting, of Hannah Muriithi.
https://nyakundireport.com/exposed-the-corrupt-ways-of-nhif-boss-hannah-muriithi-part-1-of-20/
https://nyakundireport.com/nhif-and-kenya-red-cross-ambulance-scandal-part-10-of-20/ Why not prosecute Hannah Muriithi for the MMC Africa Scandal?